Pakistan arrests ended UN talks with Taliban: Ex-UN envoy

---

A partial view of the Dhaka Stock Exchange.

LONDON, Mar 19 (AFP): The arrest of key Taliban leaders in Pakistan stopped a secret channel of communications with the United Nations, the former UN special representative to Afghanistan said Friday in a BBC interview.
Kai Eide, who stepped down from the post earlier this month, confirmed for the first time that he had been holding talks with senior Taliban figures and said they started around a year ago.
Face-to-face talks were held with "senior figures in the Taliban leadership" in Dubai and other locations, said the diplomat, adding he believed the movement's leader Mullah Omar had given the process the green light.
Eide said that "communication picked up when the election process was over, and it continued to pick up until a certain moment a few weeks ago."
He was referring to the arrest of senior Taliban commanders in Pakistan in recent weeks, a move which had been welcomed in the United States as a sign of the country's increasing willingness to track down Afghan militant leaders.
But the diplomat said the detentions had a "negative" effect on attempts to find a political solution to the eight-year-old Afghan war and suggested Pakistan had deliberately tried to undermine the negotiations.